Krauthammer on Gates Book: An Indictment Of Obama That ‘Rises Above Everything Else He’s Done in His Presidency’ (Video)

Reporter Bob Woodward reveals some forthcoming secrets from Gates’ new book, Duty, which will be published next Tuesday. Woodward describes the book as “an antagonistic portrait of a sitting president.”

One of the revelations Gates makes in the pages of Duty is a discussion between Obama and former rival Hillary Clinton regarding opposition to President George W. Bush’s surge policy in Iraq:

Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.

Gates writes that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.”

Men are being killed at three times the rate as they died under Bush’s leadership, and Obama is not even trying to win.

Those men remain there out of political cowardice. Men are dying for Obama’s political cowardice.

On Special Report, Tuesday night, Charles Krauthammer called it “a shocking revelation.”

“I had assumed that he didn’t believe in the war from his own actions, he said. “But here from somebody sitting with the president, three months in! And I do think that this is an indictment of the president that rises above everything else he’s done in his presidency.”

Well, that’s a tough call – there’s so much to choose from. But sending men into harms way to die at three times the rate of his predecessor (because of his suicidal rules of engagement) for a cause he doesn’t even believe in – is about as bad as it gets.

I’m guessing the part where she admits her opposition to the surge was entirely political? (Conservatives already knew Democrats were playing politics with the war and were thoroughly disgusted by it. Now the whole world knows.)

1. Contempt for Congress
Mr. Gates expresses open disdain for Congress and the way lawmakers treated him when he testified at hearings. “I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country.” Mr. Gates said he fantasized about storming out of hearings and quitting. “There is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that,” he writes of his fantasy.

2. Contempt for Vice President Biden
Mr. Gates expresses particular dissatisfaction with Vice President Joe Biden. He describes Mr. Biden as a “man of integrity” who “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Specifically, Mr. Gates said he opposed Mr. Biden’s proposed limited strategy in Afghanistan to focus on counter-terrorism: “Whac-A-Mole hits on Taliban leaders weren’t a long term strategy,” he writes.

3. Suspicion of White House Control
Mr. Gates described the White House and its national security team as too controlling and says that he found himself at odds with Mr. Obama’s inner circle. At one meeting in the Oval Office in 2011, Mr. Gates said he considered resigning because of the White House micromanagement and strategy. “I never confronted Obama directly over what I (as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and others) saw as his determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national security policy and even operations,” Mr. Gates writes. “His White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost” in the 1970s.

6 thoughts on “Krauthammer on Gates Book: An Indictment Of Obama That ‘Rises Above Everything Else He’s Done in His Presidency’ (Video)”

“…a shocking revelation…”??? Wha? Has Charles been in a coma? Why are these supposedly bright/smart journalists surprised at this? Everything that this disgrace of a president does is either politically motivated or malevolent.

And when ValGal’s sock puppet can combine the two, all the better.

He met the bodies of those killed in Benghazi and lied to the faces of their kin. He is the coldest MoFo walking.

One more point and that is, why the hell didn’t Gates, AT THAT TIME, raise bloody murder? 5 years and 100s of deaths later is when he opens his piehole?? Sorry pal, it might be “a shocking revelation” now but had he resigned at that time and said why, he could’ve made an impact.

Besides, the lines are drawn-the sycophants will shovel this into the memory hole and conservatives won’t hammer the bastard for fear of being called racists.

I run hot and cold on Krauthammer-when he suggests he’s surprised by Gates shocking revelation, I still have to wonder why.

Sometimes he is right on target but sometimes like a few weeks ago when he poo-poohed the differences between constitutional conservatives and the McCain/Boehner/Ryan/Graham/McConnell wing, I wonder what the heck he’s thinking.

Krauthammer noted that he had always assumed that Obama didn’t believe in the war based on his actions, but the fact that the Defense Sec was thinking the same thing from the get-go was a “shocking indictment.”
Look – Krauthamer’s job as a pundit, is to provide memorable soundbites in the media to help push conservative ideas into the media narrative. He does a pretty decent job of that.

As for the establishment VS tea party wing of the GOP, I think maybe he was pushing the idea that most Republicans agree on the essentials, but disagree on tactics. But I didn’t see that soundbite, so I don’t know for sure.

That was exactly what he was saying but it’s wrong ND, we don’t agree on the essentials. You can’t look at the insane spending that both parties push and tell me my party represents me. Paul Ryan is a disgrace.

Did you catch Levin last night? He went part and parcel through the Chamber of Commerce and their ties to our leadership(?) and how these supposed Republicans are even backing REgressives.

So to hear Charles try to tell me that it’s just raining as the old saying goes, was way, way off base.